An Ewock was the camp's name for log and lashing liability nightmare
structures that were modeled on the dwellings of a fictional race of
teddy bears from some movie. ← I wrote that bit right there to fire
nerd rage and for no other reason; I know the Ewocks are from the Star
War. We were supposed to find four roughly squared off trees and get
four logs to make an elevated square lashed to the trees. Next we
took other logs and made an air raft to sleep on. It was every boy
who grew up on Swiss Family and Star Wars ideal camping situation. We
ever made three other smaller decks to sleep and hang out on and one
small deck that we called the piss awning which was used for peeing
off of. By the end of the week with eight boys all making use of the
facility it ended up smelling pretty strongly of urine. It was
awfully convenient to have an en-suite bathroom for the old number
one though, that is the kind of luxury normally reserved for Ewock
dignitaries and the ewock equivalent of Donald Trump. That was not an
easy joke to come up with, I had to think of someone who was well
known for being rich and boorish but once I hit upon the big D I
imagined a Ewock with a poopy little twisted up face and a horrid
comb-over and it was actually really funny in my minds eye. Imagine
it for yourself now. Now imagine that self-important little fuzzball
steepling his chubby little fingers and leaning over an ewock sized
mahogany board-room table and saying, 'You're fired' in ewockese.
Awesome. We had been working at a feverish pace for six hour by the
time our adviser showed up to see what we had done and he was
horrified at the height and scale of the uppermost lofts. The idea
was for us to build a single deck 4 or five feet off the ground but
under my guidance we had built a deck 10' up and 14' up and 16' up.
He said that we couldn't use the high decks because if we fell in the
night we would die and then he made up put up a railing around the
twelve footer for safeties sake because we had refused to dismantle
it and put it at a tamer elevation. We had made such a nice and high
shelter that lots of other campers came to see and pay homage to the
real forest kings.
